SO I figured before we got too far with the kitchen posts that I should mention that we have "accidentally" gotten ourselves into another major home renovation before. We have this cute tendency apparently.

When we bought our 1952 ranch home it had carpeting. We knew there were hard flooring beneath and that refinishing them would be our first priority before moving in. Well, it was a mess. Daniel worked his tail off sanding the floor, once we got the carpet and padding removed. We noticed that there was pretty extensive water stains. We were on a time-crunch and decided to stain it "ebony" to try to hide the stains.  Daniel then coated it with the polyurethane but, it did not have time to cure properly, and we did not have ideal weather- it was rainy and humid. When we moved our furniture it scuffed in several areas, but we lived with it for two years.

This past mother's day I said that I wanted to paint the living room, I figured that was a pretty easy gift. Well, we figured, now was as good of time as any to replace the trim...which then led to it being a good time to totally refinish the flooring in the living /dining room. Our quick painting project turned into TWO months of floor refinishing. Daniel and I work opposite schedules, and with our kid's activities, we were each working on it solo.

We had to experiment with several strippers...my husband had to find the best. :)

We had to brush the floors with a coat of stripper and let it sit

This was after the stripper had sat for awhile- then we got to use a paint scraper and scrape all of the old stain off. IT.WAS.TERRIBLE. I considered carpet several times at this point.  This is honestly why this project took so long. We had to go over sections several times- it was MADDENING.

While we were doing the floors we decided to remove this half circle built in shelf and the tile from in front of the door. The tile was tedious work. I was not very careful with removing it because, initially, we were going to lay new tile. We ultimately decided we liked it better without tile.  I am also a major klutz and do not need something else to trip on.

Slowly but surely getting there. You can see a little of the water damage I mentioned. Daniel worked at bleaching those areas before we put on new stain.

This area still had  carpeting and we decided to remove it as well. The stains you can see here are what go through our whole living room.  Just in the major walkways. We worked really hard to get this area sanded and bleached to match the living room

Almost ready for stain

Here we go! We are using Jacobean this time.

All Stained!

This was before the polyurethane -you can see the spots where we had to bleach a little more since staining. It has remained a little rough to the touch but this area is covered by our sectional so its not a huge deal.      Polyurethane is dry! So, there you have it. Our first adventure with a small project that quickly turned into a big one!